Saturday 6 March 2010 19.05 EST
First published on Saturday 6 March 2010 19.05 EST

Mean Streets (1973) 'What's a mook?'

Robert De Niro in Mean Streets. Photograph: Warner Bros

Scorsese's uncanny ear for dialogue was evident from his first masterpiece, Mean Streets, which is set in the heart of Little Italy among debt collectors and small-time hoods. Characters were called by names such as Johnny Boy, Joey Clams and Giovanni Cappa. In one classic pool-hall scene, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and David Proval start a fight - over the jukebox sounds of Please Mr Postman - after a barman calls one of them "a mook".

Goodfellas (1990) Tracking shot entrance to the Copacabana

Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas. Photograph: Warner Bros

Ray Liotta's Henry Hill takes new girlfriend Karen (Lorraine Bracco) to dinner. They enter the Copa via the back door, go through the kitchen and are led onto the dancefloor and to the best table in the house. In one unbroken three-and-a-half minutes' shot, the camera (operated by several times Oscar-nominated Michael Ballhaus) glides with them. "What do you do?" she asks as they sit. "I'm in construction," shrugs Henry, and the shot ends.

Raging Bull (1980) 'I coulda been a contender'

Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. Photograph: Warner Bros

Marty loves a mirror. Travis Bickle asked himself: "You talkin' to me?" in Taxi Driver (1976), and De Niro's bloated washed-up boxer Jake La Motta goes in front of the looking-glass to perform his one-man show, reciting from the works of "Shakespeare, Budd Schulberg and Tennessee Williams". We see the Oscar-winning De Niro, rehearsing his lines, doing Marlon Brando's speech to his brother, from On The Waterfront, and psyching himself up to go on stage, still calling himself "champ".

The Big Shave (1967) The shaving scene

Peter Bernuth in The Big Shave. Photograph: Warner Bros

Shot for a class at NYU film school, Scorsese's six-minute short features actor Peter Bernuth, yet again in front of a mirror, at a sink, shaving himself closer and closer until he bleeds and blood drips down the plughole recalling the shower scene in Psycho. It's played out over the jazz standard "I Can't Get Started" and has been seen as a metaphor for American involvement in Vietnam, probably because the asthmatic young Scorsese also dubbed it Viet '67.

Round Midnight (1986) Scorsese's cameo

Scorsese himself in Round Midnight. Photograph: Warner Bros

Marty contributes a brilliantly oleaginous cameo as corrupt nightclub owner RW Goodley in Bertrand Tavernier's jazz movie. Goodley greets Dexter Gordon and François Cluzet at JFK and talks incessantly during the cab ride into the city. "New York, for me, the music's better, because it's tougher, the people are tougher," he riffs as they cross the Williamsburg Bridge, framed by Manhattan's skyline. "SOS," says Dexter when Marty finally leaves them. "Same old shit."

Casino (1995) Sharon Stone throwing chips

Sharon Stone in Casino. Photograph: SNAP / Rex Features

One of the director's least appreciated movies, this is the story of Sam "Ace" Rothstein (De Niro) running the mob-owned Tangiers' casino in Las Vegas with his childhood friend Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) as an enforcer.

Sam is eventually brought low in this tale of greed and violence by his obsessive love for Sharon Stone's table hustler, Ginger. The film is Stone's finest performance and contains a number of breathtaking shots and sequences. The overhead of her rapturously throwing her chips in the air has become one of the most imitated Vegas scenes.

Academy Awards 2007 Winning an Oscar for The Departed (2006)

Martin Scorsese accepts best director award for The Departed at the 2007 Academy Awards. Photograph: Getty

At the 2007 Academy Awards, Scorsese finally won an Oscar for best director, for his take on the Hong Kong corrupt cop drama, Infernal Affairs. Scorsese's remake is set in Boston. The Departed also won best picture, as well as best adapted screenplay and editing.

His feeble, miserable, tragic routine - delivered in red trousers, shiny jacket and bow tie - goes down quite well, even when he confesses how he actually got the gig. The audience thinks it's part of the act.

'I figure it this way: better to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime,' he closes.

The Red Shoes (2009) Scorsese's restoration work

Scorsese's respect for film heritage has led to him overseeing numerous resoration projects, these include founding the World Cinema Foundation to help countries preserve their cinematic treasures and so rediscovering films such as Senegal's Touki Boukiand Morocco's Transes.

Last year at Cannes, he presented a sparkling new print of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1948 ballet film The Red Shoes.

Scorsese introduced Powell to his editor Thelma Schoonmaker in New York, and the pair were soon married.

In 1987 he recreated the choreography from Cool in West Side Story in the video for the title track of Jackson's new album. The dance sequence, set in an underground car park, forms part of an 18-minute short film. It's about expensively educated Daryl (played awkwardly by Jackson) doing a dance to show his old friends 'who's bad'.